American Spiders and Their Spinningwork, Vol. 1

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Excerpt from American Spiders and Their Spinningwork, Vol. 1: A Natural History of the Orbweaving Spiders of the United States With Special Regard to Their Industry and Habits The studies whose results are here given have been prosecuted throughout the last sixteen years. I have largely limited my investigations to the habits and industry of spiders, as the matters which seemed most important at this stage of scientific knowledge. None but the field naturalist can fully know and appreciate the difficulties of my task. To these ordinary obstacles have been added special hindrances of my own. The cabinet or laboratory student, with his pinned and alcoholic specimens, is largely independent of outward condition, but he who studies nature as a living thing is the servant of seasons, hours, moods. He must live amidst the life which he would see, and seize the opportunities as they come, or lose his venture for that season or year, or perhaps wholly. The duties of nay calling in a large city have held me rigorously away from the open country except during two months of the year. Summer vacations, and such leisure hours as a most busy life would allow, have been given to the pleasant task of following my little friends of the aranead world into their retreats, and watching at the doors of their fragile domiciles for such secrets of their career as they might happen to uncover. Occasional excursions at other times were unavoidably brief, and often broken off at the point of promised discoveries. I have, in part, indeed, overcome this obstacle by transporting and colonizing specimens, and by directing the observations of others. But, at the best, artificial conditions fall short of Natures fullness, and no faithfulness of assistants can quite equal personal investigations. Then, again, the natural disposition of the spider is a great hindrance to the prosecution of field studies. It is a solitary and secretive animal, and the most ingenious device for winning its confidence is as apt to drive it into hiding as to persuade it to revelations. In this there is a great difference between these solitary Nature, creatures and those sociable and demonstrative insects, the ants, whose life history I have heretofore been permitted to give to the scientific world. The success which was readily obtained by spending a few weeks or months encamped among formicaries of emmets, continually eluded me when trying like methods with araneads. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.